I made a fresh pot of coffee this morning. It was early but I was awake. I’m sure of it. In order to make the coffee, I had to clean out the pot and the grinds from the little basket. That takes a few minutes and I’d let the dogs out and yea, I know I was awake… but the coffee tasted weird all day long.
I assumed it was because I’d gotten used to Starbucks blond after drinking 3 straight bags of it and today I had to use pre-ground some not well known name bag of coffee because that’s what was in front of me and the bags of whole beans weren’t right there in front of me.
No big deal, I will pretty much drink any coffee and be happy about it. But I’d pretty much decided I was never going to buy this brand again, no matter how inexpensive it might be. It just tasted… not great.
So tonight, I was out of coffee (yea, I drank an entire pot of not very good coffee today — coffee is coffee and when you’re addicted, you drink what’s in the damn pot) so I made another pot. I cleaned out the pot. And the basket thingy. I filled the basket with that same brand of ground coffee and pushed the button to turn on the machine.
It started making that very loud airplane sound that the Breville is known for … when it’s grinding beans.
What? Grinding beans? NO! No grinding beans, I was using pre-ground coffee! I ran back into the laundry room, where my Breville is, and pushed the power button to turn it off. Sure enough, I had forgotten to change the settings this morning so apparently it ground up a few stray beans in the bottom of the basket and brewed that coffee along with the pre-ground coffee I’d filled the basket with.
No wonder it tasted weird.
The Breville has different settings for pre-ground and whole bean brews. There’s a strength difference and a difference in brewing times and hell, I just totally flubbed it this morning. I caught it in time tonight — the coffee is fine. It’s no Starbucks or Prince of Darkness or even Seattles Best but it’s FINE now.
What the hell was I thinking? Maybe I wasn’t as awake as I thought I was this morning?
Giggle. Fancy coffee makers are complicated.
“that very loud airplane sound that the Breville is known for” What a perfect description! We have to warn houseguests that they WILL be awakened by the coffeemaker in the early AM. Yet they all scoff at first. (Hell, I think the whole neighborhood is awakened by that coffeepot, now that open window weather is here.)
And, yes, preground tastes completely different when you forget to tell it that’s what you’re using.
why is your coffee maker in the laundry room?